My name is Daniel Copeland. Immanuel Kant was a real... I like quirky humour, Im incurably philosophical, and I hail from the Antipodes (New Zealand rather than Australia, but still). For my living, I take notes in lectures at the University of Otago on behalf of students with disabilities.

Monday, 5 August 2013

The Tao of bullshit

For some reason a lot of the traffic to this ere blog lately seems to be coming from a video advertising The Tao of Badass, a book by someone called Josh Pellicer. He starts out doing the RSA Animate thing of hand-drawing cartoons to illustrate what hes talking about, but halfway through he seems to have got bored with that and switched to (badly-punctuated) text in the middle of a blank white window. This is far from the only way that Pellicers video is a waste of space, so Im not linking it here. You can Google it if you must. How exactly Pellicer is sending pageviews my way I dont know, because theres no link to Very Rarely Stable on the video page. Either its on a message board which you have to sign up, presumably having bought the book, to see, or its some kind of spambot. Spamming peoples blog traffic stats doesnt strike me as a terribly effective way to sell a product, but hey.
Josh Pellicer is a man on a mission. A mission to (make money by pretending hell) help guys get laid. You can tell its dodgy right from the get-go, because there are no controls on the video. You cant stop it, pause it, or even change the volume. You can only watch. That tells you straight away, same as a telemarketers pitch, that this person cant afford to let you stop and think before you commit to what hes selling. At the beginning the voice-over tells you the video will be taken down after 24 hours. Ive now seen it three times, weeks apart  no, I only sat right through it once, but Id say thats a pretty good gauge of the quality of what Pellicer has to hand out.
Oh, and when you close the browser tab, you get the following alert:

ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO LEAVE???
Without these secret psychological tricks, your success with women may NEVER improve...
So if you want to STAY and learn all of these POWERFUL DARK SECRETS of attraction...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CLICK THE *STAY ON THIS PAGE* BUTTON BELOW
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Are you sure you want to leave this page?

Seems legit.
Being as how he is in this to make a quick buck off the gullible, Pellicers presentation is light on content. He kind of hints at what some of the secrets are; the main one seems to be that if you convince a woman that there are a bunch of other women after you, itll get her interested despite herself. His supporting evidence is that this is what happens with fish. Another thing that happens with a lot of fish is that they spontaneously change sex if they find themselves in single-sex groups, so, you know, if youre a guy living and working in an all-male environment you might want to start buying menstruation products just in case. Unless of course not everything thats true of some species is automatically applicable to all species. Just saying.
But lets admit that it might apply. Pellicer doesnt stop there. Repeatedly, he promises that the secrets hes revealing are hard-wired into the female brain. In other words, say these magic words and women will drop their pants for you. Theyll have no choice. Need I point out that this isnt how it works? Actually, to the kind of guys Pellicer is preying on, probably, yes.
Now, I do try to mount the best opposing case I can think of, because that makes for the strongest rebuttal; so heres the most plausible defence I can muster. Humans of all genders are animals, and animals are driven by reflexes, instincts, urges, and desires, some of which can override prudential considerations when they are strong. (For instance, people who are trapped underwater cannot prevent themselves indefinitely from inhaling, with lethal consequences.) Getting laid is not a matter of life and death for us as individuals  but brains arent built by individuals, theyre built by genes, and your genes are just as dead if you fail to have sex as they are if you neglect to eat or breathe. Many men have been disturbed to discover their own capacity for self-deception as to the advisability or otherwise of a given sex act when theyre in the moment, especially during adolescence; this is one major reason why abstinence-only sex education is such a flop. Theres no logical flaw in supposing that women might have similar experiences.
However, (1) thats when youre already aroused, and (2) being manipulated by someone youre not interested in is an instant turn-off. Pellicer claims that he can get you past (1) for women, with no evidence beyond a bunch of e-mail testimonials that he probably wrote himself, plus he says hes read lots of textbooks. This makes him dubious on the face of it. His advice is, in fact, far more likely to run you headlong into (2), because women, like most men (though perhaps this is less true for men likely to be taken in by Pellicer), keep an eye out for dishonest and manipulative intentions in those they interact with. And make no mistake, Pellicers prescriptions amount to blatant manipulation.
Im not clear whether Pellicer himself thinks his theory of womens sexuality is true or not. It is clear that he doesnt care. Pellicer is, in short, bullshitting, to use that philosophical term as defined by Harry G. Frankfurt. Whats disturbing about Pellicers sales pitch is not the parts he doesnt believe in, but the parts he does: namely, his ideas about how women and men relate to each other and what roles they play.
To explain how he came to be the great expert hes claiming to be, Pellicer tells a big sob-story about a previous relationship. He was living with his girlfriend, and paying for their flat, and then one day her father came to town for a surprise visit, and she hadnt told her father that she had a boyfriend let alone lived with him, so she made him pack up all his things and leave town for three days so she wouldnt have to let on. Quite reasonably  pretending for the sake of argument that I believe the story  Pellicer decided, after being caught by the police sleeping in his car behind an abandoned house, to break up with her. Id entirely agree that her actions there signalled gross dishonesty and a fundamental lack of respect. Id agree, that is, if that was in fact what Pellicer is complaining of. But thats not how he puts it. What he says is that he was whipped, and that after the encounter with the police he started to think Ive got to get this attraction thing sorted out.
This is highly revealing. The absence of respect and trust in their relationship seems to have bothered him not at all. By whipped he means he was doing what she wanted because he wouldnt get sex otherwise; by getting this attraction thing sorted out he means figuring out how to get sex from other sources so that he wouldnt have to depend on her as his sole supplier. The same attitude is evident throughout Pellicers presentation. He promises, for instance, to help his marks get out of the Friend Zone. The Friend Zone is when one of a pair of friends hopes that the friendship will blossom into a romantic and/or sexual relationship, but the attraction is not mutual. A disappointing and frustrating experience, to be sure, and if that was all there was to it I wouldnt object to the term, but it also connotes and shes stringing him along on purpose and she keeps going out with douchebags instead and isnt it mean of her... with a strong subtext of If I cant boink her whats the good of being her friend? Exactly how guys who think this way define douchebag to exclude themselves, I couldnt tell you.
Pellicer ranks women on a hotness scale from one to ten. Worse, he doesnt actually say so, he just refers to it from time to time (his ex was not even that hot, no more than a five or six; he claims to be able to teach men how to score with the nines and tens), which means he thinks its something that doesnt need saying because anyone can see it already. Im not claiming to be any less visually-oriented than most guys but I have at least figured out that my tastes and attractions are in my head, not objective standards that can be applied to other people.
The one that pulled me up sharpest, though, was when Pellicer started talking about how guys think they have to meet all these standards to attract women. Its just like what women do, he explains: women think they have to jump through all kinds of hoops to attract men, all those things that the womens magazines promise to help them with, the endless time they spend on their make-up and what not, when any guy knows we dont care about that stuff. Up to there I was kind of Well, thats true, at least. Then Pellicer goes on to say that guys only want two things from women: One, be hotter, and two, give great head.
Theres so many things wrong with that I dont know where to start. I guess what surprised me, even having seen Pellicers attitude to women quite a bit already, was the sheer lack of understanding. Empathy is about getting it right as well as being nice. To the extent that all the make-up and clothes and the tips and tricks in the womens magazines are aimed at attracting men, they constitute attempts precisely to be hotter. Now, if I were inclined to be charitable, I might note that hotness has more to do with attitude than anything else  at least, attitude better accounts for my own attractions, and what I gather about other mens, than any particular feature I could put my metaphorical finger on  so perhaps Pellicer is merely recommending that women be more confident and more comfortable with themselves; in which case, way to undermine yourself, dude, but half a point for trying. But I dont seriously think thats it. To Pellicer, sex is a service that one purchases from women by doing boyfriend-y stuff, and its market value is determined solely by the physical sensations accompanying it, not what it means in the relationship or anything like that.
In case you, dear reader, are also a guy who thinks that, this is whats wrong with it. Id guess, just as a matter of probability, that you have male friends, and that theres at least one guy in your social group whos particularly good at making people laugh. Yes? A real funny guy. Youd pay to go see him if he decided to go into stand-up. Now imagine something bad happens in his life, his dad is diagnosed with cancer or something, and for a wee while he cant joke the way he usually does. How do you respond? Do you hang out with him less, make him buy his own beer, because youre not getting as much out fun out of his company as youre accustomed to getting? Do you go out and Google for a book called The Tao of Funny to figure out how to get comic geniuses to tell you better jokes?
Yes. Sex is the same. Yes it is. Yes, it is. Yes, women are people you can socialize with. Sometimes at the same time as having sex with them.
Oh, all right, no analogy is perfect. Youre quite right, your hilarious friend probably wont mind you getting your laughs from other people, and you dont mind that hes entertaining other people besides you. Thats an important difference. But that makes sex less of a commodity, and more of an intimate personal relationship thing, than laughter.
Look, I get it. I really do. I am a male with a social disability whos attracted to females, which means I have extensive experience of unrequited love and sexual frustration. Thats just the way the world works. Women might desire sex just as much as we guys do, but desire is only one side of the ledger; the other side is risk, which falls far heavier on women than on men. I dont have to explain why, do I? (Do I? Starts with P. Rhymes with regnancy.) On my twenty-first birthday I had yet to go on a date, let alone hold hands or kiss or anything more physically intimate, and I was seriously scared that thats how life was going to be. That fear had already fuelled the longest and heaviest depressive episode Ive ever had, which started in 1997 and went most of the way through 1998. My point is, I know where guys who fall for bullshit like Pellicers are coming from.
But now? Now, Ive been with my partner for eight years, and weve been living together for five of those. Before we met Id been with a number of other people. Im in no position to boast of either my prowess or my continence, they were all brief flings because I needed a few learning experiences before I was ready for a long-term relationship. So how did I get there? Im afraid theres no magic formula. Thats kind of the point, really. I can remember being disappointed, and eventually angry, back when I was still undiagnosed and desperately reading self-help guides in the back of the University Book Shop to see if I could find any insights at all into my relationship woes, to find that none of them even pretended to offer advice on how to approach women in such a way as to be reasonably hopeful of a yes answer. Thats because there isnt a way to do it. Nothing works. If a woman agrees to go out with you, or go home with you, or go to bed with you, it means she thinks youre an exciting enough person to be worth her while, not that you tried something on her that worked. All my partnerships grew out of talking to women as if they were people. Theres a reason for that, which youll think of if you ponder it really carefully.
And, having now given Pellicer and his bullshit more time and attention than either one deserves, I shall leave you to do just that.

How is Pellicer getting all those reviews (clearly typed en masse by foreigners making a dollar a post a la CCP) to show up in Google search results? How many webdomains did he purchase solely for the purpose of this scam? Google josh pellicer scam and u get 15 ESL reviews lauding the mystery and awesomeness of this scam, its unbelievable. Just to make help this blog page appear in the search results, josh pellicer scam scam pellicer propinquity scam...etc

stumbled across this thing today (I am a girl) and just want to say THANK YOU for calling him out on his bullshit. I get so sad/mad when I find stuff like that so it's great to find this and know not all of humanity is lost!

I love so many things about this article that I can't figure out what to compliment first. It seems to me that Pellicer is the one with the social disability and you would be much more likely to attract women!

Respect! :)I also got this BS over FB today, and endured through the "presentation video". Before I would write a review of it myself, I just checked on it, and found Yours. Everything I'd say, You said already, so no need to repeat things.

This Pellicer douchebag managed to make it so searches of his BS bury articles like this one that tell the obvious truth. I never thought that anyone could be a bigger jerk than folks who pushed the Nigerian money scam or the guy who did the Girls Gone Wild videos from the 1990's. Congratulations, Josh Pellicer, on proving me wrong and being a bigger douche than most of the biggest douchebags.

What annoyed me was that he called the psychology of it proven. Anyone who knows anything about science knows you can't prove Anything in science- especially a science as controversial and subjective as psychology! It's ridiculous. Great (review?)

While I appreciate your views and opinions on this topic, Daniel, I'm going to assume that you have not actually viewed the product itself? While I'll admit the presentation was a bit tacky, and was more of a sales pitch designed to get guys in the door because hey, lets be honest - if you're trying to sell something, you're going to want to make as many people as possible buy it, no? He may be passionate about helping the average Joe meet and seduce the woman of his dreams, but would he or anyone else be willing to declare bankruptcy over it?

As for the product itself, once you actually purchase it there are little to no "magic tricks" that may have been alluded to in the presentation. The product aims to help you grow and develop as a man, and get the aspects of your personality in line which may come across abrasive to women. It features many hard truths, which I'll be the first to admit can strike a man right in the ego.

I'm not going to start preaching about the product, simply because I've failed to apply myself to it completely, but if you're going to come at it with a closed mind then it won't help you anyway. This product will only be helpful to the man that wants to work (read WORK) to take steps to better himself, not the man that uses grammatical errors to discount a product that he gives off the impression he's never laid eyes on.

First up, Anonymous, all of two words in this post refer to the punctuation errors in Pellicer's video. The rest of the criticisms are more substantive. If you had read past the first paragraph, you would have known that.

No, I haven't seen the book. You have to buy it to see it, and I don't buy books sight unseen. The fact that he hasn't found a publisher who'll touch it, speaks volumes in itself. Are you saying that the advertising video grossly misrepresents the product? Because that's something Pellicer's marks, oh excuse me, customers, might appreciate knowing.

My biggest problem with Pellicer isn't the fact that he's out for money. My biggest problem with him is that he thinks in terms of "helping the average Joe meet and seduce the woman of his dreams", as if meeting women was a craft project or something. As if women were objects for men to acquire.

I strongly suspect, Anonymous, that you are Pellicer yourself. Either that or he's paying you. If it's the latter, do tell him this from me:

Women are people. Women are not computer games where you run the right sequence of manipulations and you win the prize. Pellicer's customers are going to be guys who think they just haven't found the right sequence yet. That attitude is, itself, their problem.

Well, whether or not you're Pellicer, it's clear you have read "The Tao of Badass" yourself. I have just one question about it.

How many women has Pellicer surveyed, or interviewed, about what they wanted in a man?

Firstly, 99% of the people that said the product doesn't work had never tried the product in the first place.And I get it: you don't want to buy the book because you buy a product only after you've seen it.And you know what?Don't buy it.I don't need other guys to know the technic.But you should watch his vids at least.And I really don't understand how do you know whats in a women's mind by the way...Anyway i'm looking forward to see you're response. I don't want to give my full name but you can call me Anthony.Try this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsP810OOWKM its almost the same as the book.

I'm not subjecting myself to Pellicer's boring voice for that long. I did listen to a few selections from that YouTube and the one following it. It has certainly not improved my opinion of Pellicer and his product, and has greatly strengthened my conviction that the answer to the one question I asked you -- the one you haven't answered yet -- is "zero".

I'm not the same guy that commented on 31 May 2014 but anyways.I just want to clarify some things.I found this article because I was searching for something like this:I really wanted some negative opinions around the book.So, you said that Pellicer's approach to women is wrong.Ok so lets face it:Most of the average guys want hot and good in a sexual way, women.Then of course they take into account other stuff.But the idea is that at first, our natural instinct is to feel attracted to sexy and beautiful women and at the end of the day you'll probably think about that when you're in a relationship too.Another think that sort of bothered me was that you were talking about the commercial, or how do you wanna call it, the whole time which is totally fine but then you name this article "The tao of bullshit".In the book Josh teaches you:1.How to gain confidence2. Understand the role of each gender-role 3.Explains the value scale4.Follow a system that works perfectly as long as you're confident and are following your gender-role .5.Find out what are the tests that every hot women (and we're talking about hot women that know that they're hot)and how to pass them5.And finally, read some basic body languageBut all of this works when you are confident.And all of this works if you actually try it. But you are saying that a recipe doesn't work even before you try it?Nope,I don't think so.And maybe the first time you tried the recipe the cake didn't taste so well.But as time passes you'll cook better and better and you'll find out that,that recipe actually works...or not.But you have to try it to find out.And this is actually the single problem with this article.You are judging a book by its commercial.Read the book or at least listen to one whole chapter regarding confidence or gender-role or whatever.Say your opinions about the information that is sent to you not about the Josh's "boring" voice.And name this article The Bullshit Tao of Badass Commercial/Webinar.You can't write a review of a movie when watching its trailer.Now,go ahead put a question that involves a fact in the book or at least another video where he is teaching something and I will do my best to find an answer to that.Meanwhile returning to your question:How many women has Pellicer surveyed, or interviewed, about what they wanted in a man?We are talking here about what a women truly wants not what a women thinks she wants.And,I don't know what you understood but Josh says that the primary quality that every hot women wants is confidence and the main job of the male gender is to be a social provider.His research was based on scientific facts not on interviewed women.So,next time you write an article about something:a)refer to that "something" as you should b)actually do a bit of search around that "something".

"Ok so lets face it:Most of the average guys want hot and good in a sexual way, women.Then of course they take into account other stuff.But the idea is that at first, our natural instinct is to feel attracted to sexy and beautiful women and at the end of the day you'll probably think about that when you're in a relationship too."And if they don't approach women as people first, they will be frustrated in that instinct no matter how "natural" it might be, and they will deserve it.

"But you are saying that a recipe doesn't work even before you try it?Nope,I don't think so.And maybe the first time you tried the recipe the cake didn't taste so well."If a recipe lists horse shit and propane as its main ingredients, I don't need to try it. If someone's selling me a book that claims to teach me how people think, and they haven't bothered to talk to any of the people they're claiming to teach me about, that's case closed.

"We are talking here about what a women truly wants not what a women thinks she wants.And,I don't know what you understood but Josh says that the primary quality that every hot women wants is confidence and the main job of the male gender is to be a social provider.His research was based on scientific facts not on interviewed women."Science is when you base your conclusions on the real world. If the piece of the real world you you want to know about is people's minds, you talk to them. You interview them or survey them. Now, granted, the thoughts people have when somebody's pushing a questionnaire in their face aren't necessarily the same as the thoughts that actually drive their behaviour, but psychologists and anthropologists have ways around that. If you don't talk to people, you aren't doing science about people.People don't always know what they want, it's true. But people are guaranteed to be better-informed about what they want than some outsider trying to guess what's going on in their heads.

you know what?i give up.i dont need you to agree with me.all i wanted you to do was to bring up some facts from the book or vids and i could show you how an why they work.but all you did was to bring some other shit about the research done.bring up the facts.other wise great article.next time when you do one of this maybe actually understand whats in the product you now...wait a second....how many people that tried this book have you interviewed?none?damn!but have you at least tried it yourself?no?nicely done!

Yes, well, I don't see the need to do the conversation your way. The book has failed at the evidence test. No more tests are needed.If I was claiming some deep, expert understanding of people who fall for Pellicer's bullshit, you're right, I'd probably want to interview them. But I don't need to do that to understand that it is bullshit.

I know your kind. Your that type of person that holds to his arguments even though they are based on some shitty evidence and than when you try to explain him why the evidence is shitty he is still not listening and refuses to discuss with you. why? because he thinks that he knows it all.well let me tell you something bro.you don't.i don't.thats why i was telling :bring up some information from the book or vids.tell me what did you found wrong.and im going to try to explain it to you.maybe im going to prove you that you were wrong.or maybe you will prove me that you were right.but you don't want to have a debate because...i get it.maybe the ad was bullshit.maybe pellicer's voice is boring.but when i started i didn't give a f*.i wanted to get the girl i always dreamt to have.and let me tell you something:why the f* is that so wrong?is it so wrong to say to a nerdy high school student :bro,chill out. you dont need to have big muscles or good looks or be a complete jerk to get beautiful girls be a badass in life.i dont think so.that nerdy kid needs to know that he has the inner power to be a man not a wuss ,as pellicer said ,and get the girls that he thinks he deserves.and im not writing all of this because i want you to buy the book or what the hell are you thinking.im writing this because most of the people think that they dont have the power to change certain things in life and they are all like ''god help me''or they just give i .i believe in god but i also think he left us with the power we need in all situations.

you are always saying that a women is a person and you cant obtain her.thats correct and i agree.but women are naturally attracted to a certain type of men.their mind finds them simply more attractive.as most of the guys are attracted to a certain type a women.simple.nobody said that women are just things.so misogyny is out of the picture .thats what i wanted to say.and if you are going to write another bullshit comment about the reasons you dont want to {...} please don't.

"and if you are going to write another bullshit comment about the reasons you dont want to {...} please don't."I'll comment on my own blog as I please. (There was me thinking you said you'd given up on this.)

"i wanted to get the girl i always dreamt to have.and let me tell you something:why the f* is that so wrong?is it so wrong to say to a nerdy high school student :bro,chill out. you dont need to have big muscles or good looks or be a complete jerk to get beautiful girls be a badass in life.i dont think so.that nerdy kid needs to know that he has the inner power to be a man not a wuss ,as pellicer said ,and get the girls that he thinks he deserves."Why is that so wrong?Because "beautiful girls" are not yours to "get". Consider Elliot Rodger.Because being a strong man is not the same as "getting girls". Would you not call this badass? "Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honour to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come."

"but women are naturally attracted to a certain type of men.their mind finds them simply more attractive.as most of the guys are attracted to a certain type a women.simple."Three problems:(a) Different women have different attractions;(b) One thing most women do have in common is that they're instantly turned off by someone trying to manipulate their feelings;(c) You can't find out what people want without asking them, and by your admission Pellicer hasn't.

LIMITING BELIEF: To figure out what women want, just ask them. REALITY: This may be true sometimes, but not as often as many people think. It wasn't until I started trying behaviors that seemed counterintuitive that I discovered a key principle of the game: What women want isn't necessarily what they respond to. Furthermore. what women say they want may be what they want in a relationship. but it isn't always what attracts them during the courtship period. That said, most women will give you the information you need to attract them, but its usually found between the lines.

Beauty -skin deep and sometimes not even that deep. Can be lost in a rain storm or ..Why do you fall for image? Confidence attracts both genders. GOD is in that one. Take it as a gift -it is. Confidence comes from being real. Women who use too many props like too much makeup and false undies fall apart at the reveal. But you guys love the fake and miss the real beauty.You really don't know real beauty-and do YOU possess it? Then why do YOU demand it?Think

Thank you very much for this article. I have never had greatest problems finding an alternative opinion on any matter as I did on this book. The guy has an incredibly aggressive approach that stands out among the pushy marketing molesters. It's sad how a human being becomes a target, a means for egoistic goals imposed by modern narcissistic society. We could think it's her fault when she is naïve or slutty, but on second thought the guy's responsibility is unavoidable. This could be the much-debated difference between us and animals. Thanks again:)

For every clear-headed reviewer pointing out a blatant scam, there are one hundred affiliates going for your throat for compromising their profit. Your article is that one in a hundred, and I salute you for that.

After reading the article and reading most of the negative comments i realize that humans are sometimes dumb because we think something is not gonna work without even trying it or doing the effort so we become arrogant and deny everything that might actually improve ourselfs so i happy i made the right decision and if u dont agree " Well let the best man win"

thanks daniel, not only for your article, but for bothering to answer to every guy who still thinks there´s something arguable about Pellicer's bullshit. I really like your night's watch quote to illustrate the existence of greater ends in human race, than just getting laid.I´m a woman by the way, I think this is an important thing to bring out in this topic.I saw the entire TAO video before daring to share any opinion. In the fisrt place, assuming that Pellicers method would work (assumption that makes me laugh), i can´t understand in what way it is regarding for any man to get women's attention by lying. I mean, at the end he will know he hasn´t acomplish nothing but following a series of steps that allows him to hide who he really is, and therefore the woman is not really atracted for him...But ok, I'm learning there´s a huge amount of morons aut there who are merely interested in the phisicall aspect of woman-man interaction, and nothing more than this.the bad news for these people is that everything about Pellicer's theories is wrong. woman, man, and the relationship between them, as well as any kind of human relationships, are mucho more complex than Pellicer suspect, and can´t be reduce to no formula.so if you man, as this Pellicer guy, percieve woman in such a simplistic way, let me tell you, thats the reason why no woman will ever admire or even put her eyes on who you really are, in first place. and i really thank mother nature for not allowing you to get laid, for the human race need people like you stop breeding.Lets emphasize that this discussion is not about weather Pellicer's bulshit works (that's out of question). It is about how terribly wrong is his whole approach to the woman-man interaction subject.

"i can´t understand in what way it is regarding for any man to get women's attention by lying. I mean, at the end he will know he hasn´t acomplish nothing but following a series of steps that allows him to hide who he really is, and therefore the woman is not really atracted for him...But ok, I'm learning there´s a huge amount of morons aut there who are merely interested in the phisicall aspect of woman-man interaction, and nothing more than this."Sadly the problem is that a lot of men really do only care about the physical aspect of sexual relations. I'm quite certain Pellicer himself is one of them. I do sincerely hope that we can work towards a culture that prevents such attitudes from forming, but I think that while progressive activists have made some amazing strides already, there are some obstacles that haven't been fully addressed yet. And one is that as well as different sexual orientations, there are also what you might call different attraction-styles.Some people are attracted to another person's whole self. They might take an interest in a person they don't know very well, but part of that interest is wanting to find out more about them. They don't fall in love unless everything they know about the person attracts them. If the person proves to have any serious personality problems, that's the end of the attraction.Other people are quite the opposite. They feel attraction to another person the moment there is even one feature about that person that attracts them -- whether it's a feature of mind or body. They can very easily develop feelings of intense love, or perhaps I should say infatuation, for people they know nothing about whatsoever. I'm sorry to say they can sometimes feel attraction in the absence of any personal respect.As it happens, the first kind of people are mostly women and the second kind of people are mostly men. That's not completely coincidental, it's an evolved response to the fact that women have to bear the costs of pregnancy and therefore have much more to lose by getting it on with an unsatisfactory partner. Much as I think the first style of attraction is less problematic morally and socially, my own style is the second one. And yet I still don't think like Pellicer.In particular, the whole thing about only a few women being truly attractive (and Pellicer's promise to help men "get" those women) is complete nonsense. That judgemental attitude isn't about attraction. It's not "I'm afraid I can't find a woman desirable unless she has such-and-such physical features" -- people with the second attraction style find lots of different people attractive. It's "I demand to have sex with the most desirable women I possibly can, otherwise I am not getting my dues." It's entitlement to control over other people's bodies, and it is utter, utter bullshit.

I do agree there's different attraction-styles in each person. However I don't really think theres just two kinds of prefereces regarding attraction processes.you can see this is true just by noticing that you may have felt attracted to a girl that doesn't necessarily fits in what you think you find attractive.all the same I do think you're right there's women that don't feel compelitely attracted unless they like everything about a guy, and guys that develope interest and attraction to women they don't necessarily know. this fact you're explainning has to do with the natural instincts governed by our genes. I guess you might have read or heard about "the selfish gene".But I think that theory minimizes the complexity of human relationships. I think we do scape of our instincs and genetic programming when it comes to our complex psicological processes. I may be wrong though.(by the way, I apologize for my deficient grammar in this and in my previous comment. English is not my mother tongue)

I'm sure there are people whose attraction style falls between those two, and presumably at least a few who fall outside the whole spectrum. As with other aspects of sexuality and gender, I would expect the population generally to fall into a distribution with two clear peaks but no empty columns and no sharp breaks.I do subscribe to the selfish-gene perspective on evolution, in general. Whatever other criticisms one might make, the one thing I don't think it does is minimize complexity. That's one of the major differences between a gene and an intelligent designer. A person designing a system consciously keeps it simple enough to intervene and fix potential problems. Genes don't look that far ahead. Whatever works, works, regardless of how complex it is. Sit through a few health-science lectures some time and boggle at the phenomenal biochemical complexity of the human body. A bit of social complexity on the top of that really isn't much to ask.I think it's not so much a matter of escaping our instincts and genetic programming, as that one of our instincts is to take stock of a situation and make plans with our long-term interests in mind.

To begin, I have degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science and I did not take Psych 101 in college. I saw part of this video once before and this time I watched the whole thing. I think this video could be used in a marketing class because I paid less attention to the content than how it was being presented. This was not a webinar the way Josh claims, but an infomercial. If you believe that his techniques work then you should also realize that he's using the same psychology to sell his stuff. No matter how bad your life is, his was worse. The poor guy got tossed out of the flat that he was paying for and all he had to entertain himself were school notes and textbooks in his back seat. When my wife and I separated (amicably) I moved into a condo, and I did NOT make sure that my old school stuff was readily at hand. (Who keeps that stuff anyway unless it is useful in their career?) Why didn't he move into a cheap hotel for a few days? Did he have to take ALL of his possessions for a temporary move?

The initial animation was clever and helped draw me in. It also let him put "footnotes" in the video by scribbling text to the side. For example, one of the cops felt sorry for him. How low can you go when even the cop sent to arrest you feels pity? It was fast paced to keep me from thinking too much about it. When it was time for the hard sell he switched to text and kept promising to reveal the big secret in a second. The sell had all the hallmarks of an infomercial: it's available for a limited time, it costs not X or Y or Z (which are all made-up numbers), and there are free bonuses.

As others have pointed out, the basic idea is demeaning to women. If Josh really has sex with 15 women a month, then he's having a one night stand every other day. That's not what I'm looking for. I didn't know that only women who rate a 9 or 10 are capable of fantastic sex. I felt that he tried to manipulate me in the video the same way he claims to be able to manipulate women. No wonder all he has are one night stands.

You, sir, are my new hero. I landed on Pellicer's video while browsing the net and I was fascinated - but not in a good way. More in the way that you can't stop yourself watching a horror movie. The guy is a misogynistic scammer with poor spelling ("psichology"? really?!), and boasting that he was sleeping with "new, hot women" every week shows how he views women and sex: as commodities, consumer goods. NOT attractive. Yech. Then I googled him and realised he seems to have created a whole lot of sites recommanding his BS. Despicable. Anyhow, you, on the other hand, rock. Peace.

Hilarious! I bought the PDF book a while ago and found out that it works incredibly well. So I thought, "let me write a positive review", Googling to find any, I stumbled upon your page.Well it looks like a scam, the video's are typically dodgy like other scams on the internet, but either this guy is brilliant or brilliantly ignorant, his stuff actually works.9 out of 10 women will respond to me, after 3 months in the game, I sleep with 6/10 women I like, some later appear to be married.But now I see this and investigate further, it does look extremely dodgy indeed. The domain I purchased it through has now expired, so I can't reach the "members area" anymore LOL. Don't need it anymore either, but I can't say that I hve been lucky. It is like said higher, the recipe works, but only experience makes the result taste fabulous, you need to make it in to your own.What he says in the book is not bullshit, controlling your body language works 100% as described.His chapter on report is spot on, I now use it in sales situations, works everytime.Ironic read for me, this blog.LOLMatt

Let's suppose that someone previously lacked the confidence to speak to people they found attractive, and that a bogus system gave them that confidence. The result might well be that they got more sexual satisfaction. But the system is still bogus, the charge for it is still fraudulent, and the side-effect of promulgating disrespect for women as people is still a social oil-spill.

I must express my overwhelming gratitude for this post. You have posted the only review that has anything actually negative to say about this book and Joshua Pellicer. Please don't misunderstand me though. I am thanking you because this review is lowering the amount of men that will get their hands on this material. Which of course is bad for Joshua Pellicer but great for gentlemen like myself who actually choose to use this material to improve. This material wouldn't be anywhere near as valuable if everyone actually implemented it. For the select few who do, the endlessly frustrating dating game becomes a chess match where you know all the moves of your opponent. This system, just like any, must become a part of your subconscious for it to actually take affect. This is what Joshua Pellicer's "victims" fail to comprehend. There is no magic here, no quick fixes. It's just like getting wealthy; if it were easy, everyone would be wealthy. Becoming wealthy is hard work. The same can be said for becoming attractive, not just to women, but to people in general. Attraction is all psychological, just like getting wealthy. That's the hardest part about it.

Again, thank you for your service to the (very small) population of confident men.

The tao system is as good as long as your practice what the book teaches and that means putting yourself in a position where there are lots of girls around. You need to be approaching girls to get more dates. It's like anything in life, the more you do it, the better you get at it.

Christ, this is literally the only sincere article about that book that isn't spam.Google and Youtube are completely clogged with spam, actual discussions and reviews are buried by it.Such a disgusting, subtle form of censorship.

This product is a waste if time, I bought this thing in the hopes that it would teach me how to talk to women on a college campus but it didn't I have had this book for months and can't understand what it is saying at all. I speak English but it seems that this guy doesn't. The support that comes with it doesn't work they want you to but more. AND on top of that I get emails for this guy about other people and how great there product is. If your so called "book" doesn't work then what makes you think that there's will. Trying to read this is a headache in a PDF. If there product is great then I should have bought there's but its not.This is a HUGE wast of time all it got me was nothing but depressing failures !!!!!

Read this. I confirm it's bullshit. Well, it is not UTTER bullshit, as it does have a few interesting pointers. But as Daniel says, the principles are just not sound. In brief, not worth your money. Innocently I'll say: Hey guys, it's probably downloadable for a tryout, from bittorrent.But I TOO MUCH HATE the fact that Pellicer paid so many Amazon Turks to overflow with positive reviews. This is dishonest and making me sick.

Hi from Auckland! I stumbled upon the video and watched part of it, out of curiosity. I found the animations pretty cool - when it switched to words I lost interest. I did note all the dodgy marketingy things - the video will only stay 24 hours, I'll tell you my trick in seconds, I'm going to get in trouble, the myriad of websites of people who tested several systems and his came out on top. Cheap labour will do wonders, huh... Nice to hear that I'm just goods for him and his gullible followers to f*** and discard while he moves onto his next target. Ahhh no. I'm not a 9 or a 10. I'm safe from his irresistible charm. I will try that looking at the mouth trick on a guy though, see if it works both ways. If it does, maybe I'll set up a couple of books, videos and websites and use your blog to direct me traffic. Oh and love your comment on the all-male flatmates buying menstrual products. C.

Daniel, I do agree with you that the video was bland and boring. As well as aggressive. Also it made many claims that it didn't live up to.

I would like to say that I bought his ebook and it is completely different from what the video claims. Just a little disclaimer, I am not Joshua Pellicer nor am I being paid to write this. I am just giving my honest opinion. The book is less about picking up women and more about self betterment, confidence and how to become a more social person. The main points of it are meant to give you the confidence to approach a woman and attract her in the hopes that she might become your future wife. While a lot of the book is common sense, it does have some points that make it worth reading. It also teaches you how to be a better person overall. His book is nothing like the video states. In that it is less about a ton of one night stands and more about lasting relationships. In fact there is an entire chapter dedicated on how to make your relationship last.

I have taken the techniques described in the book and applied them. I have not had a ton of one night stands or anything of the sort. I have noticed, however, that I have become more social and I feel better about myself. I am glad that I read the book as it taught me how to become more confident and a better friendlier person. I agree with your review on the video, but I suggest you read the book, or just a chapter of it, as well. Just to get an idea what it is really about and do an honest review on that. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts.

OK. Almost deleted this one, but it's worth pointing out -- this is not about the difference between one-night stands and relationships; it's about treating women as people, not as computer programs you can hack. There is nothing in the world wrong with having sex with lots of different people as long as it's what everyone wants and you're not deceiving or hurting anyone; there is everything wrong with having sex with just one person and trying to find dishonest ways to sneak past their personhood and get as much sex out of them as you can.And, as I've already mentioned, something can boost people's confidence and still be bullshit.

I've been doing sex research (legit, published in peer reviewed publications) for 20+ years and a few years ago a student brought in Josh's Tao of Badass material. My students have been tracking him as a class project each semester for about four years now. We even purchased his full course materials so we've had a good glimpse at what he has to offer. There's absolutely no scientific merit to any of his ideas, none of which are original anyway (they are "techniques" shared by lots of PUA {pick-up artist} gurus).

Undeniably this is a guy out to make money, not that there's any shame in that. His business strategies and practices are fairly sophisticated but not sinister---he keeps an eye on his "brand", uses fake endorsements, and tries to boost his search engine rankings just like lots of others do. He's not particularly misogynistic, in the sense that he has equal regard for both men and women (that is, he will comfortably profit from either men or women).

The potentially shameful part is that he is really in the business of exploiting men with low self-esteem. Don't worry, there's not any technique or secret method that someone can learn to seduce people. It's all just snake-oil, and the only guys paying for it are gullible---they really WANT to believe it will work.

Funny part is that I had a student email him a detailed critique, that called out every false claim and corrected them via empirical findings...we didn't get a reply and still get his daily spam messages that warmly remind us to be Badasses.

It seems like he disrespects women in that video, there is no reason to argue against that (video is terrible made), but who cares when shit actually works.

Just answer me one question. Why do you think he would put entire book for free on youtube so that people could see that the things he learns don't work? Why would he risk so much if he was just a fraudster?

Give me a reasonable answer to that one question and i promise i will leave you, your deluded followers and your stupid blog alone to think that women are mysterious, unkown non-things that science of psychology can't describe, predict and manipulate.

"that women are mysterious, unkown [sic] non-things that science of psychology can't describe, predict and manipulate"That's your idea of respecting people as human beings? Describing, predicting, and manipulating them?I neither know nor care why Pellicer makes the marketing decisions he does. I have control of the Delete button, and you don't, so your promise is kind of weak, don't you think?

I just read the part about disrespecting women more thouroughly. Heres the answer your looking for. Women dont know what they want...and neither do men. Attraction is curiosity. Women will automatically disregard a man without knowing him at at based on appearance. Men unknowingly display charatersitics that are repulsive to women on a subconcious level. He makes men aware of this and how to change that behavior. Which stems from lack of social skills and comfort in social situations or just around women in general. Thats how its a hack. Its like a predjuduce. A man can change a few things to not fit into a mold a woman has on what she doesnt like...which is based on a memory of a person they may have met in the past or saw on tv. No 2 people are exactly the same but people tend to judge a book by its cover. Like guys judge women by their looks initially without thinking about the personality. Hope that helps. Theres more to it but if your familiar with Jed Mckenna it might lead you to a more in depth undetstanding. A lot of his teaching comes from him i found.

An ingenious reply, but one I think gives Pellicer too much credit. As I've said before, his "research" doesn't seem to have involved any communication with women about what they want or what they feel attracted to.

You say "his 'research' doesn't seem to have involved any communication with women about what they want or what they feel attracted to".

That's an unfair criticism IMO. He has certainly researched what women are attracted to quite a lot, but he did it BY ATTEMPTING TO ATTRACT WOMEN AND NOTING WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN'T, not by asking them for their opinion. That's actually a perfectly valid scientific approach!

That said, the video presentation is a schoolbook example of the most annoying form of salesmanship known to man, as is the spamming of obviously fake "reviews" all over the internet, and anyone trying THAT hard to sell me something is going to get the door slammed in his face.

My opinion on PUA advice in general, is that it is simply basic common sense social knowledge packed and sold to the truly clueless for profit. The methods described all "work" in the sense that a naturally confident man who knows how to be sexy and attractive to women without having to fake it every step of the way will have great success with women, and he will do it by acting the way described (even if he never read a word about it).

Unfortunately, that's unlikely to help 99 % of the guys buying the advice, because seduction is like humor - it's all in the delivery. If you can't get the timing right, your attempts at sexiness or funniness falls flat.

In short, I think the PUA techniques work perfectly fine - for men who already know how to interact with people socially. Not that these men need to read it, they just do what comes naturally to them.

But it's a scam to the vast majority of those who buy it because social misfits aren't going to magically turn into social adepts just by reading a book that "cracks the code".

By my best estimation, perhaps 1 % of those who buy the book will manage to get something useful out of it, like an incentive to try to improve their social skills in general.

He has certainly researched what women are attracted to quite a lot, but he did it BY ATTEMPTING TO ATTRACT WOMEN AND NOTING WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN'T, not by asking them for their opinion.How did he tell what attracted them without asking them about it?